


Sharpe's Question

by InkSiren



Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [22]
Category: Sharpe (TV), Sharpe - All Media Types, Sharpe Series - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: 5+1 Things, Brotp, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, F/M, Fights, Fluff, Gen, Heartbeats, Hearts, Nightmares, PTSD, Prompt Fill, Romance, assassination attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29074905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/pseuds/InkSiren
Summary: 5 times Richard asked someone else if they could hear his heart beating, and one time someone asked him.
Relationships: Lucille Castineau/Richard Sharpe, Teresa Moreno/Richard Sharpe
Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034673
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My friend had a wish for characters to ask this very specific phrase: "Can you hear my heartbeat?" more often and so I decided I wanted to come up with six scenarios.

“Go on then,” he goads, pressing into the dull metal, green eyes flashing in the dark. “Do it.”

The man snarls instead of acting, and Richard bares his teeth without sound, lunging all of his strength to push away from the wall and spin the man so hard he dashes his head against it. He cries out, fumbling the knife and crumpling as Richard catches and hauls him up, shoving him harshly against the brick.

“Coward’s way, is that it? Wait till a man’s alone and slit his throat like a pig? If you were any sort of gentleman you’d have challenged me.”

Behind him, he hears a pistol click and he stills, slowly turning his head to look. His teeth are still bared, his eyes glittering. His blood is running hot with fury and he is not afraid.

The real mind behind this attempt is holding the pistol high, her eyes flinty as Sharpe turns to face her with her husband held between them.

“I was wondering if you’d have the stomach, seems he certainly doesn’t,” he spits, shoving the man towards her so he stumbles and stays on his knees on the cobbles.

“What now, you going to shoot me?”

Her eyes narrow, flashing like his in the darkness and he recognizes she has the spine her husband doesn’t.

Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t have Sharpe’s aim, and his soldier’s reflexes twitch him just out of the way of her misfire. He doesn’t give her the chance to even think about reloading or pulling a knife, he leaps over her husband and twists the pistol out of her hand. She snarls at him and goes to claw at his eyes, but he grabs her wrist and spins her around, pulling her smaller frame up against his chest where he can pin her. She struggles and spits, but cannot get free of him as he wraps both arms tight around.

They’re both breathing hard, and it billows to fog in the lamplight.

The woman’s head is pinned against his chest and he can feel her muscles twitch with aborted thoughts of escape. He gives her a moment to wriggle, drawing his breath back and straightening them both up. He shakes her once when she goes to knee him in the crotch, sweeping her legs and dropping to one knee so her skirts are caught beneath it and she’s truly immobilized. She curses him and he smiles like a shark.

“Can you hear my heart beating?” he asks, low and through his teeth, giving her time to register the gallop just beside her head. “Do you know how many people have tried to silence it? You’re far from the first, love.”

She snarls again and bucks in his grip, managing a mouthful of his sleeve. He can feel her bite down, but it’s nothing. He huffs a dry laugh, shaking his head.

“Feisty bugger aren’t you? I almost respect you. Now, we can stay here and you can struggle and see who gets tired first, or you can stop and I’ll pretend you didn’t just try to put a bullet in my chest.”

She spits, tossing her head as much as she can beneath his arm and finally he hears her words. “I hope you die slowly. I hope someone is there to witness it and laugh, and I _pray_ nothing more comes of your heart than a fine meal for the dogs.”

Richard flips her around suddenly, and gets her back up, this time facing away from him so he’s much harder to kick. “Then I hope you’re more prepared for disappointment than you were for this ambush. Walk.”


	2. Chapter 2

Teresa is at his back, and for the first time in his memories since the flogging, Richard is grateful to have someone there. It’s a strange, startling thing. He’s had lovers since in his bed, but he never fell asleep with them at his back, and when he wakes the first morning with Teresa at his side he realizes she’d slept pressed into his scars and he’d let her.

He swallows the lump in his throat and carefully turns his head, not wanting to disturb her if she is still asleep.

She isn’t, but she makes a sleepy noise of protest and her arms tighten around him, and he smiles softly as she buries her head between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t move,” she says, stroking her thumb across his breastbone once in a way that makes his heart speed up. “ _Aún no_.”

He presses a hand over hers on his chest and leans back into her a little more, relishing her heat and the chance to be lazy. It won’t last, he knows, and he wants it to.

She hums happily and shifts impossibly closer, and he senses that she is studying him as she traces her fingers along his ribcage.

“They will eventually want me to show up for inspection,” he says quietly, a smile and a tease in the words as he gives into impulse and catches one of her hands, bending his head to kiss her fingers.

“Eventually, _si_. For now they don’t get a say.”

He smiles even wider and finally cannot resist, turning over so he can look at her. She is watching him from her dark eyes beneath gorgeously tousled hair and Richard thinks for a moment that his heart has stopped. His breathing certainly has, and she quirks a soft smile of her own, tracing his jaw. “Richard,” she teases. “Breathe or your pretty heart may stop.”

He laughs, obeying as he lays back again. “Pretty?”

“Mmm,” she hums, carding back his hair, her touch tender against his cheekbone as she traces him. She leans over, dropping a kiss to his chest before resting her head and closing her eyes with a sigh of contentment. “Beautiful.”

He buries his fingers in her hair and strokes all the way down across her back. “Beautiful. That’s a new complement.”

“Then I am glad to have been the one to pay it,” she says, eyes still closed. She’s gone more still, but Richard doesn’t think she’s going back to sleep and he studies her, fondness beyond reason coursing through him with every beat.

“You’re listening now,” he realizes, finding it captivating to watch her like this. She doesn’t respond, and he traces her cheek, settling his hand against her shoulder after. “Can you hear my heartbeat like this?”

“Very clearly, when you are not speaking over it,” she says, opening one eye to smile at him before shutting it again. “It is making it very difficult to stay awake, and yet...if I sleep I can no longer appreciate its beauty.”

He truly does not know what to say to that. She seems enraptured by him, and it is the first time he’s experienced this kind of affection. He’s seen the look in another person’s eyes when his life is hateful to them. He’s seen indifference and he’s experienced fondness...but this is something else.

Something more.

Richard hopes he will be able to stay near to her long enough to find out just what.


	3. Chapter 3

“You know sir, I hope it’s not too bold but it’s incredible to me you ever succeed on stealth missions.”

Richard takes another long draw of arrack, passing the bottle over his shoulder to Patrick. The two are sitting back to back, keeping a sloppy kind of watch since neither can sleep and Hagman is the one truly on lookout.

  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, shifting against Patrick’s back so he can frown over his shoulder. “I’ve finished plenty of missions without being caught. I were doing it well even before the green jacket and you were ever a part of it. I once slit two men ear to ear in the dead of night and nobody even knew they were dead till dawn”

There’s a slosh as Patrick takes another drink himself and then: “I only mean you’ve got an uncommonly loud heart to go with that fiery personality and if we weren’t all half-deaf from cannon you’d have been caught before now.”

“Oh here we are on again about my anatomy being wrong. Take it up with God,” Richard snorts, stealing back the bottle. This always seemed to come up when they were drinking. “Uncommonly loud--I’ll give you it’s easy to find but you’re really pushing now, Pat. You suggesting some frog is going to find me by heartbeat and blow my cover?”

“I’m saying it’s not out of the realm of possibility, seeing as I can hear it now.”

Richard turns abruptly with a frown and Patrick swears as he catches himself. “You’re a bloody liar.”

“I am not, and I’ll prove it,” Patrick says, turning towards Richard and picking the bottle back up.

“Will you then? And how do you mean to show me my own heartbeat?”

“Simple, I tell you when I hear it beat and you tell me if your pulse matches in time.”

Richard stares at him for a long moment, then: “Go on.”

“Well I can’t do it now, can I?”

“Then when _can_ you do it?”

“When my head’s anywhere near your chest.”

“Well, glad to hear that’s normal at least. You said you could hear it while we were sitting just back to back. Prove it to me that way.”

Patrick lifted his chin, fixing Richard with a defiant expression before turning around. “Alright,” he took another drink and handed it back. “I will.”

Richard finished the bottle and coughed, shaking his head once before shuffling back and resting his back against Patrick’s once again. The bigger man leaned into him and they both relaxed, a wave of tiredness suddenly cresting over Richard.

“Alright,” he says, settling the fingers of his right hand on his left wrist. “Go on.”

“You’ve got to stop talking.”

“And stop breathing too I’ll wager,” he mutters, earning a clumsy smack against his head. “That’s a flogging offense,” he adds, before falling silent.

For a long, long moment they’re both quiet. The quiet goes on for so long that Richard’s eyes slip closed, and he almost forgets what they’re doing entirely as sleep tempts him.

Then Patrick brings him back with a soft: “There.”

And then he taps on the ground, once, twice, three times, in a pace steady as a drum. And he keeps tapping, and Richard feels that tapping echoed in his wrist.

“Bugger me, can you really hear my heartbeat Pat?” he asks, earning a frustrated grumble from his Sergeant.

“Well now, no. Because you’ve caused me to lose it but when it’s real quiet and we’re leaning like that I can.”

“Wonder if I could hear yours that way,” Richard says, leaning his head back against Patrick’s neck and staring up at the stars.

Patrick’s shoulders roll against him, but he doesn’t disturb their arrangement “Well, if you stay awake and try,” he says through a yawn. “You can let me know in the morning.”

Richard does, and he can.


End file.
